Multi-Day Tours in Kenya

Multiday tours in Kenya are built from circuits, and the Mara is only the best known of them. It is the northern end of the Serengeti ecosystem, and several routes carry on into Tanzania. The south-east belongs to Tsavo, where the Mombasa road divides Tsavo East from Tsavo West, itself roughly 9,000 square kilometres; the man-eating lions of 1898 hunted railway workers here. The north is higher: the Aberdare range, with moorland peaks near 4,000 m, then Ol Pejeta, a rhino sanctuary on the equator, and Samburu, dry country with Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, gerenuk and oryx. Mount Kenya has its own circuit, a trek to Point Lenana at 4,985 m by the Sirimon, Naro Moru or Chogoria route.

Kenya multiday tours differ by style as much as by route. Group-joining trips fill shared 4x4s, while private ones keep a Land Cruiser with a pop-up roof; budget versions sleep in camps or tents, luxury ones in lodges. Flights can replace the road to the Mara or Amboseli, and from Mombasa and Diani they are the quick way inland. The coast also has Tsavo East and the Taita Hills, by road or by train. The longest routes, twelve to fifteen days, cross into Tanzania for the Serengeti and Ngorongoro, add Zanzibar, or pair bush with beach. A few are not standard safaris: a bush wedding in the Mara, two-week honeymoon routes and two-week volunteer placements.

Practical. Tsavo is hot all year: Voi, at its gate, runs 28C to 33C by day and 17C to 21C at night, with almost no rain from June to September. Nakuru, at about 1,850 m, has days of 23C to 27C and nights of 12C to 14C. Samburu, about 350 km from Nairobi, is a long day's drive. On Mount Kenya frost is the norm every night on the upper mountain, and the guided climbs run four to six days, which leaves time to acclimatise.